Business AgLife
B
Thursday, May 21, 2020
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Oregon
unemployment
hits
record
14.2%
HAPPENINGS
Small-business & Ag
By Michael Kohn
EO Media Group
EO Media Group
Chieftain earns Society of
Professional Journalists award
ENTERPRISE — The Wallowa County
Chieftain and editor Ellen Morris Bishop
won first place in sports photography in the
Society of Professional Journalists North-
west Excellence in Journalism competition.
Bishop’s photograph of Joseph Charter
School high school basketball, “Carson Lit-
tlepage is stripped of the ball,” received
the top honor in sports action photography
in the small newspaper category, which
includes papers with up to 15 reporters.
Judges narrowed 1,300 entries down to
250 winners, recognizing reporters, pho-
tographers, designers, editors and more
throughout the region, which includes
Washington and Oregon, as well as Alaska,
Idaho and Montana.
Volunteer members from SPJ of western
Washington and Oregon administer the
contest.
Farmers, ranchers to receive
support for COVID-19 losses
WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of
Agriculture Sonny Perdue in a press release
Tuesday announced the details of the Coro-
navirus Food Assistance Program to pro-
vide up to $16 billion in direct relief pay-
ments to America’s farmers and ranchers
who are enduring losses due to the corona-
virus pandemic.
Also, USDA’s Farmers to Families Food
Box program is partnering with regional
and local distributors, whose workforces
have been significantly impacted by the clo-
sure of restaurants, hotels and other food
service entities, to purchase $3 billion in
fresh produce, dairy, and meat and deliver
boxes to Americans in need.
Producers can apply for assistance begin-
ning Monday, May 25, through the Farm
Service Agency. The Coronavirus Food
Assistance Program provides financial
assistance to producers of agricultural com-
modities who have suffered a price declines
of
5% or greater due to COVID-19 and face
additional significant marketing costs as a
result of lower demand, surplus production,
and disruptions to shipping patterns and the
orderly marketing of commodities.
There is a payment limit of $250,000 per
person or entity for all commodities com-
bined. Applicants who are corporations,
limited liability companies or limited part-
nerships may qualify for additional payment
limits where members actively provide per-
sonal labor or personal management for the
farming operation. Producers also will have
to certify they meet the Adjusted Gross
Income limitation of $900,000 unless at
least 75% or more of their income is derived
from farming, ranching or forestry-related
activities. Producers must also be in compli-
ance with Highly Erodible Land and Wet-
land Conservation provisions.
Additional information and application
forms are available at farmers.gov/cfap.
Producers of all eligible commodities
will apply through their local FSA office,
which will accept applications through Aug.
28.
Documentation to support the produc-
er’s application and certification may be
requested. FSA has streamlined the signup
process to not require an acreage report and
a USDA farm number may not be immedi-
ately needed.
More information can be found at
farmers.gov/coronavirus or at your local
Farm Service Agency.
SALEM — One out of 8
jobs in Oregon was idled or
lost in the month of April, a
dubious record caused by state-
wide lockdowns to slow the
spread of the coronavirus.
Oregon lost 253,400 jobs in
April and 13,200 in March, the
Oregon Employment Depart-
ment reported Tuesday. The
unemployment rate stands at
14.2%.
“While these numbers make
for shocking historical records,
they cannot totally capture
the economic trauma so many
Oregonians are experiencing at
this time,” said Anna Johnson,
a senior economic analyst with
the department.
The record-high unemploy-
ment follows a rate of 3.5%
before the pandemic. The new
data marks the largest month-
to-month unemployment rate
increase since the recording of
comparable data in 1976.
The total number of unem-
ployed in Oregon reached
300,420 in April. Nationwide,
unemployment has increased
from 4.4% in March to 14.7%
in April.
The numbers eclipse even
those from the Great Reces-
sion, when Oregon lost
150,000 jobs over two years.
The leisure and hospitality
sector bore the biggest brunt
of the pandemic closures with
108,400 jobs lost in April. That
figure makes up 54.6% of all
jobs lost, said Johnson. No
sector in Oregon gained jobs in
April. Other hard-hit industries
include health care and social
assistance (26,800 jobs lost),
retail trade (22,500 jobs lost),
and the professional and busi-
ness services sector (19,200
jobs lost).
Government workers were
not immune to the lockdowns,
with 13,100 job losses. There
were also 12,000 jobs lost in
construction and 11,600 jobs
lost in manufacturing.
Even though many parts
of the state are beginning to
reopen it’s not clear yet if May
numbers will be much better,
said Johnson.
Startup hopes to clean up
Wallowa man worked for
years to create a line of
environmentally friendly
cleaning products
J
By Bill Bradshaw and Ellen Morris
Bishop
EO Media Group
JOSEPH — Some of the world’s most
successful, multi-billion dollar companies
— Amazon, Microsoft and even Disney
— started in a garage. Wallowa County’s
newest startup has followed suit.
Wallowa Valley Cleaning Products
intends to produce its environmentally
friendly laundry detergent, household
sanitizer and other products in Wallowa
County. Michael Harvey, the founding
partner and driving force of the fledgling
company, moved to the county a few years
ago. But he was no stranger to the region.
“Fifty-five years ago, our Minne-
sota Boy Scout troop was studying Chief
Joseph and his life. Thirty years ago, I vis-
ited the Wallowa Valley for the first time,”
he said. “In 2016 I moved to Joseph. I
thought maybe I’d retire.”
Harvey spent his career as an envi-
ronmental attorney for Apple, Intel, and
Samsung. Retiring was not exactly what
happened.
“I was reading labels of supposedly
‘green’ home cleaning products,” Harvey
said. “And I was shocked to see that even
the ‘green’ brands contained many ingre-
dients harmful to the environment and/or
humans, and some didn’t even clean very
well.”
He put his 35 years of corporate expe-
rience to work, figuring out how to make
more effective, safer and sustainable home
cleaning products.
But he didn’t do this alone. Harvey
found seven partners for the new venture,
each with expertise in a field related to his
then-unborn products, including the chem-
istry of cleaning, production of cleaning
compounds and, of course, marketing.
They devoted three years to planning the
products, exploring how to produce them
and providing sustainable packaging.
Most of this happened in Harvey’s Joseph
home with occasional trips into the garage
to try out new ideas.
The result is 12 products, including
dish soap, laundry products and dish-
washer detergent.
But it takes more than careful formu-
lation to produce a green product. There’s
Photos by Ellen Morris Bishop/EO Media Group
Mike Harvey demonstrates how the automatic filler machine he keeps in his garage will
someday be used to fill bottles with pre-set amounts of cleaning products.
The coded tag attached to every
refillable bottle will let Wallowa Valley
Cleaning Products learn more about
the life expectancy of its sturdy plastic
containers.
packaging, too. Wallowa Valley Cleaning
Products wanted to avoid sending plastic
to landfills or contributing to ocean
pollution.
“We decided to make our containers
refillable, so you don’t need to recycle
them or toss them, Harvey said. “You can
just keep refilling them.”
The fledgling company invested about
$25,000 with a Canadian company to
design and produce a sturdy refillable
bottle.
Every locally sold refillable plastic con-
tainer will come with a metal “dog-tag”
bearing a computer-readable bar code
cabled to its handle. That tag entitles the
customer to refill their cleaned containers.
It also will allow the company to deter-
mine how many times the container is
refilled and how long it lasts.
“That should help keep plastic out of
the landfill and also let us track the lon-
gevity of our designs,” Harvey said.
So far, the cleaning products have been
shipped from Albany to Joseph and
packaged in Harvey’s garage, using a
big, shiny machine that premeasures the
amount for each bottle. Harvey or one of
See, Startup/Page 2B
Don Swart guided Chieftain into the 21st century
By Ellen Morris Bishop
EO Media Group
ENTERPRISE — In
journalism there is nothing
more paramount than objec-
tively telling the truth.
Donald Swart, Sr., former
Wallowa County Chieftain
editor and publisher, epito-
mized this value, along with
a love and support of com-
munity, of people and of the
landscapes he cherished.
Swart died May 12 in
Enterprise of cancer. He
was 86.
Swart, a Wallowa
County native, went to
work for the Chieftain
after his father-in-law, leg-
endary editor Gwen Coffin,
asked him to take a job for
the summer of 1960. Swart
devoted the next 40 years of
his life to the paper and the
community. He captained
the Chieftain, first as news
editor, and then as editor
and publisher, from 1972 to
his retirement in 2000 when
he turned over the reins to
his son, Rick Swart.
Long-time Chieftain
reporter Elane Dickenson
said, “Swart steered the
Chieftain through many
technological changes, from
letterpress to offset printing
in the 1970s, and later from
typewriters and paste-up
into the computer age.”
Always open to change,
Swart personally built an
extra room on to the old
Chieftain building for an
offset newspaper press, and
introduced one of the first
commercial computers in
Wallowa County. Dick-
enson recalled Swart said
the piece of equipment that
was the same as when he
started was a well-used
pencil sharpener.
Swart was a Korean war
veteran who had piloted a
U2 spy plane over Russia,
China, and North Korea. He
brought both self-assured-
ness and a concern for his
community to his work.
“You have to care about
what you are doing, but you
can’t care very much about
what people are saying
about what you wrote,”
Swart said.
Swart was at the Chief-
tain’s helm through the
proposed last dams on the
Snake River, Watergate, the
spotted owl and “timber
wars” and Salmon listings
– all momentous events in
a small county. He stood up
for rural communities and
economies, ranchers, log-
gers and farmers.
Swart led the commu-
nity through his compas-
sion, savoir faire and sup-
port of clear and effective
communication. His legacy
includes the large and
robust Rotary youth stu-
dent exchange program, as
well as a newspaper that
continues to cover the Wal-
lowa County’s people and
happenings.
Contributed photo by Jeanie Story
Don Swart Sr., (right)
accepts the Rotary Club’s
Service Above Self Award
at Rotary district 5100’s
recent annual convention
with Past District Governor
Dennis Wickham.
Swart was a former
Wallowa County Chieftain
editor and publisher who
led the paper through
major changes from 1972
to 2000. He died last week
at the age of 86.